The present invention relates to the alignment of substrates, such as liquid crystal display (LCD) panels used to form computer displays and the like.
In a number of industrial processes, it is necessary to accurately and simply align a pair of substrates before they are affixed together to prevent subsequent relative movement.
For example, the last four major steps of assembly of Liquid Crystal Display (LCD) panels comprises, printing a polyimide film including baking, rubbing to form an alignment layer, alignment of the two plates and sealing most of the periphery between the two plates, and filling with liquid crystal and sealing the last area of the periphery. In the third stage, the two panels have to be aligned precisely so that the Color Filter (CF) and the Thin Film Transistor (TFT) overlay within the required tolerances. This alignment is currently done before the liquid crystal is filled and before the two plates are glued together. This process requires moving the plates in and out of vacuum chambers. It is a tedious process that is machine intensive, space consuming, and relatively expensive. However, it is and has been the method of manufacturing liquid crystal displays for many decades. There have been many attempts to modify this process but so far only minor changes have been possible.
It is an object of the present invention to replace these four stages by a new process that takes much less space, less capital expense, and cheaper to manufacture. It is a further object of the invention that the new process also requires no removal from and to vacuum chambers. once in a vacuum chamber, the entire assembly is done with the help of robots.
Elements of this process are disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,770,826, issued Jun. 23, 1998, to Chaudhari et al.; U.S. Pat. No. 6,124,914, issued Sep. 26, 2000, to Chaudhari et al; U.S. Pat. No. 6,020,946, issued Feb. 1, 2000, to Callegari et al.; U.S. Pat. No. 6,061,114, issued May 9, 2000, to Callegari et al; and U.S. Pat. No. 6,195,146, issued Feb. 27, 2001 to Chaudhari et al. The first two patents show how the rubbing machine and process associated with it can be replaced by a simple atomic beam alignment mechanism and the second two patents disclose how to replace the polyimide printing and curing by a dry vapor deposited film in a vacuum chamber without breaking vacuum.
It is known in the art that LCD can be filled by the so called xe2x80x9cone drop fillxe2x80x9d (xe2x80x9cODFxe2x80x9d) method (see U.S. Pat. No. 6,179,679, issued Jan. 30, 2001 to von Gutfeld et al). In this ODF technique, instead of sucking the liquid crystal into the display by evacuating the air between the two plates and then allowing the liquid crystal to be sucked back into the empty space, a requisite number of drops are placed between the two plates in a vacuum chamber and then the two plates are placed together to spread the liquid uniformly. After this filling, the plates are aligned and sealed. The alignment of these plates is done mechanically. This is possible for passive matrix displays since the alignment is not as demanding as that required by high resolution active matrix displays that are the most popular kind of displays for personal computers and monitors.
The present invention broadly provides a method of aligning a pair of substrates during assembly thereof, the aforesaid method comprising the steps of,
a) depositing at least one field-generating element at a selected locations on a first surface of a first substrate,
b) depositing a corresponding field-detecting element at a correspondingly selected location on a second surface of a second substrate,
c) then joining the substrates together into approximate alignment of the first substrate with the second substrate to permit a field interaction between a corresponding field-generating element and a corresponding field-detecting element to act to complete alignment between the first substrate and the second substrate.
While a single pair of field-generating and field-detecting elements may be used, it is preferable to utilize a plurality of field-generating elements at selected locations on said first surface and a corresponding plurality of field-detecting elements disposed at correspondingly selected locations on said second surface of said second substrate.
According to a preferred embodiment of the invention, for LCD assembly, the invention provides a method of aligning a pair of substrates during assembly of a liquid crystal display panel comprising the steps of,
a) depositing a plurality of field-generating elements at selected locations on a first surface of a first substrate,
b) depositing a corresponding plurality of field-detecting elements at correspondingly selected locations on a second surface of a second substrate,
c) depositing a selected quantity of liquid crystal material in a central region of one of the first surface and the second surface, and
d) then joining the substrates together into approximate alignment of the first substrate with the second substrate to permit a field interaction between corresponding field-generating and field-detecting elements to act to complete alignment between the first substrate and the second substrate. After alignment is thus completed, the first substrate may then be sealed to the second substrate
According to one preferred embodiment, the field-generating elements and the field detecting elements comprise a material having a high surface tension energy, such as solder. Desirably, such solder should have a melting point over 30 degrees Celsius, and preferably less than the setting temperature of the sealant used to seal the substrates (e.g. glass plates of an LCD) together after alignment is complete.
According to another embodiment, the field-generating elements comprise a permanently magnetic material and the field detecting elements comprise a magnetic material.